Teddybears and Autographs
by Lakritzwolf
Summary: A little piece of sillyness featuring Rincewind, Terry Prattchet, Stephen Briggs and lots of discworldfans. Picture yourself among them. Enjoy...and please Review!


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Discworld, Terry Prattchet does. Wish I did...

This came to me after looking over several pages from Wadfest, a Discworld Convention that takes place once every year in the UK

**Featuring:** Rincewind, Terry Prattchet, Steven Briggs and lots of Discworld Fans. Picture yourself among them. Enjoy!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rincewind was running.  
It was pitch-black all around him, and in the shadows, well, in what would have been shadows if there had been any light to cast them, he heard sounds. Slithering sounds. Hissing and spitting, growling and shuffling. Quite suddenly he was very, very glad that there was no light. Sometimes it is probably better to imagine than to know. He grabbed his hat with one hand and ran faster. Something wet, cold and slimy touched his leg and he screamed, accelerating even more. Behind him, he could hear a snuffling sound, a rythmic sound as if some of the creatures had begun following him.  
And there, suddenly, was the door.

Rincewind lost no time wondering. Following his philsophy that it is not the "to" that is important while running, but the "from", he slammed the door open and shot through.  
Carried by his own speed, he was still running when he realised that he was... outside somwhere. He stopped, looking around.  
Something screeched, and he spun around. He was staring at a big, shiny, metal box on wheels. A man leaned out sideways and yelled at him: "Oy! Move your stupid ass from the street, man!"

Utterly confused, Rincewind took a few steps backward and watched the box roll away with a kind of growling sound. It was not pulled by horses nor had it any magical feature he could recognise. Then he looked around and saw that on the street, it certainly was one, he was sure of that, were lots of other boxes as well. In each were sitting people, sometimes only one, sometimes two, three or four. Rincewind stared in amazement and wondered where anybody could have gotten THAT many imps to pedal these things.  
He looked around him again, assesing his surroundings. There were houses, but they looked strange. They were unusally square, and most of them unusually high. Some of them didn't even have proper roofs, ending in a flat surface.  
People were running around as well, but the part of the street used by people was on the right and left of the part with the carts... boxes...whatever...

People were hardly looking at him. It was the bustling activity of a city, but he noticed a strange thing: There weren't any dwarfs, no trolls, and no watchmen. He started slowly walking backwards and bumped into a few people to whom he hastily apologized, but they did not seem to notice much. Rincewind wiped some sweat of his forehead. Where by all the gods on disc was he?  
He turned around and started walking when he saw two young men that looked for all that's worth like students. Two scrawny guys, one wearing glases, with plain haircuts and wearing robes with glitty stars on them. One of them was wearing a silly pair of white shoes under his robe. Rincewind sighed with relief. Students. So there was SOME university of magic somewhere around here, and maybe the wizards there would be able to bring him home, somehow.

The students had noticed him and waved, walking up to him.  
"Hey!" The one with glasses said. "You are walking in the wrong direction. The convention is over there."  
"Convention?"  
"Oh, come on. THE convention." The other student winked at him. "By the way, great costume. Great hat. I couldn't be arsed with doing a hat as well, so I just left it at the robes."

Rincewind stared at them in utter confusion as they walked him up to a big building with double doors. And above the doors was... a banner. It showed... great A'Tuin, carrying the disc. And under the picture of the Star Turtle was a sign that said: WELCOME!  
Rincewind and the two students walked through the doors and entered a big hall filled with hundreds of people. It looked a bit like a fair. There were booths of all kinds, some selling foods and drinks, some selling kinds of clothing, and quite a lot selling just lots and lots of little trinkets.Rincewind walked around, looking at some of the merchandise spread out on a table.  
Badges. The logo of Unseen University on badges. The badge of the city watch. Colourful painted mugs. And a... short sleeved shirt with a writing that said: "A friend of mine went to Ankh-Morpork and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt".

Someone pounded him on the back. Slowly, dreading what he might see, Rincewind turned around and stared into a grin. Rincewind stared back. The owner of the grin was dresseds up like a dwarf, but he was wearing a badly made false beard and was as big as Rincewind himself.

"Great costume! How did you manage to get that look so battered? Had it in the washing mashine with some stones?"  
"Er... stones? I... I've just been wearing this for a while and..."  
"The man dressed as a dwarf laughed. "Man, you should take up a career as an actor. You could convince everyone you really are Rincewind!"  
"I am Rincewind!"

That was followed by another laugh, and the dwarf/man grabbed him by the arm and towed him trough the milling mass of people. "Come on, you must meet him. He will love that outfit!"  
"Him?"  
"Yeah! Sure. HIM! The master! He's giving autographs right now over there!"  
They walked up to a certain conglomeration of people around a table. At the table was a man with grey hair, glasses and a big, round hat. He was constantly signing his name in and on everything that was presented to him by the people clustering around him.  
The dwarf/man pulled Rincewind after him and yelled. "Here, look what I've found. It's Rincewind himself! In person!"  
Faces turned. Eyes stared. Rincewind squirmed, and the people... started applauding. They were... clapping their hands and cheering him. Some where evening whistling on their fingers. An obviously female voice cried his name. He blushed.

Th man in the hat looked at him, smiling.  
"Great outfit! You really looke one hundred percent like I always imagined Rincewind to look like. Great work."He continued signing all kinds of books and stuff, containing pieces of paper, shirts and, in one case, an arm.  
The dwarf/man beside Rincewind introduced himself as Marc. "What's your name, then?"  
"Er... Rincewind...", answered Rincewind weakly. Marc laughed. "Oh, yeah. Of course it's Rincewind!" He slapped him on the back again and said: "Come on. I'd like to pay you a drink." He pulled Rincewind after him again up to a booth that was selling bottled drinks. Marc bought two bottles of brown stuff, the bottles labelled with a blue eticett featuring... a goblin...? Rincewind's right half of his upper lip curled in distaste.

"Cheers man! Oh, this is great! Now I can tell ALL my friends that I had a drink with Rincewind!"  
"Er...great..." Rincewind started feeling a bit faint. He took a sip out of the bottle out of sheer nervousness and nearly choked, because it was so...fluid. It had the consinstency of water. It did taste of... nothing much, if you were used to Ankh-Morpok Ale, stuff that you could practically chew.  
Looking around uneasily, he noticed a couple of young women watching him. They started giggling and Rincewind wished he had a mug to hide his face in when they came up to him.

"Oh, we are your greatest fans!" One of them said, looking at him wide eyed.  
"Fans? I don't have a fan! It's... er...ladies equipment and... it's not very hot today anyway... er..." For some reason, that made them screech with laughter.  
"Could we take some pictures of you, please?"  
"Er..."

Two of them posed themselves on either side of Rincewind grinning madly, while the third one was preparing a box that looked like an iconograph. A very small one. But it flashed like any other iconograph Rincewind knew, so there was probably just on of those new nano-imps installed in there.  
"Another one!" said the girl with the iconograph. And to Rincewind's horror, the two beside him stood on tip-toe and each kissed him on a cheek. The iconograph flashed, the girls giggled, shook his hand with so many thanks and hurried away.  
Rincewind blinked. This wasn't really happening, was it?

Marc cuffed im in the back. "Hey, look." He pointed to one side of the room, where Rincewind noticed somthing like a stage. A man was now walking up the stairs and positining him in front of a stick with a little ball ball on the top. He tapped it and it boomed, then spoke, holding his mouth close to the ball. "Voice-enhancment imps, is it?" asked Rincewind, but that, strangely, just earned him another laugh from the people standing around him.

"Ladies and gentlemen", the man on the stage said, "I know that this is the moment you all have been waiting for. He has arrived."  
Some girls in the crowd started screaming. Music with rocks in, Rincewind thought.  
The man continued.  
"Ladies and gentlemen, discworld-fans from over the world, I present you: Havelock Vetinari, Patrician of the great City of Ankh-Morpok!"

Rincewind goggled. But there he was. There was no denying. He was walking up the stairs and onto the stage. Smiling. Smiling and waving. And the crowd, certainly the female part of it, screamed ecstatically.  
Rincewind began slowly backing away.  
That was... couldn't be... but there he was... the Patrician of Ankh-Morpok. Smiling and waving at a crown of hysterically sreeching women.Somebody threw a thing at him that looked... by all means...like a teddybear.  
A teddy? Somebody was throwing teddybears at the Patrician? And he even smiled and picked it up...

Rincewind spun around andd started running. The crowd around him parted, and some began whistling and clapping. "Run, Rincewind, run!" screamed one voice, and "Where's your Luggage?", another, and everyone around started laughing.  
Rincewind ran, found the door, struggled to get it open, shoved himself through and ran on. He didn't look where he was running, not to, just from. From a smiling and waving patrician picking up teddybears thrown at him.

Something screeched, and he spun around. The semi was running with approximately 30 miles an hour and couldn't break any more. But this fact was lost on Rincewind, who, horrified, watched it come closer and closer and grow and grow and...

...woke up screaming.

Sweating, gasping for breath, he was sitting bolt upright in his own bed, in the peaceful atmosphere of his bedroom, staring at the wall.  
It had been a dream. Some weird dream. But a dream, nonetheless.  
"D... dreaming? Yes... that's what I was... I suppose. Dreaming...", he said to himself, just to be reassuring. He got up, walked to the washstand to get a few handfuls of cold water in his face. He looked into the mirror, bend down over the sink, and then, very slowly, straightened up again. Frowning, he touched his cheek and looked at his fingertip, eyes growing wide with horror.

Lipstick?


End file.
